After recovering from hot pot, I was pleased to finally meet my tour group the next night. These would be the people I would be spending the next three weeks in close quarters with. There were seven of us, all women, plus the russian tour guide, a lad of 28 on his first solo trip as a guide. Poor thing. Four australians, a welsh-canadian, an american and a new zealander. One of the australians had already opened a bottle of wine and was drinking from a tumbler during the pre-trip briefing.
I was a little nervous when the tour guide suggested we all go out to dinner at a local restaurant that does “really nice, authentic chinese cuisine.” Fortunately the only suspect-looking thing on the menu was a spiced duck head. Oh and some snake intestines. But praise to heaven there was chow mein. Noodle dishes galore. They were really good.
By this stage I was an expert with Siri and the Google translate microphone and could even scan the menu to get the english translation. The waiters think nothing of you pushing a phone in their face for them to speak into and Translate does a not-bad translation. You’d think I’d done it all my life instead of a mere two days.
The next morning it was time for the adventure. So excited. 24 hours in a train to Ulan Baatar, Mongolia. Four to a tiny cabin on the train. We carefully arranged all our snacks and games and got to know each other.
Ever the explorer, I walked the length of the train to see what my home for the next 24 hours was going to be like. Mostly the same carriages as the one we were in, with little seats in the 50cm wide corridor in case you felt like a sit-down as you stared out the window at desert, more desert, and just to finish it off, desert. The dining cart was something else though (see photo).
After a fine evening of mongolian beer, cards, and getting to know each other, we headed off to sleep. My first time on an overnight train. I can only describe it as a never-ending slow roll earthquake. But you get used to it.
However I still wasn’t used to the time zone difference and so found myself awake at 5am. No one else was awake. It seemed like a good idea to do a bit of morning yoga seeing as my muscles were still aching from the flight and now from being cramped in the train. Little did I know it would be the start of much fun train yoga, as well as yoga pretty much everywhere over the next few weeks.
I didn’t regret it. There I was doing sun salutations watching the sun rise over the Gobi desert in Mongolia on the Trans-Mongolian train. Reach for Bucket List notebook. Place tick.
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